The Hunt for FOXP5, Wallace Kaufman
The Hunt for FOXP5, Wallace Kaufman
List: $22.95 | Sale: $16.07
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The Hunt for FOXP5
A Genomic Mystery Novel

Author: Wallace Kaufman, David Deamer

Narrator: Nancy Wu

Unabridged: 13 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/01/2021


Synopsis

Genetics professor Michelle Murphy loses her husband under mysterious circumstances and without warning, while their brilliant eight-year-old daughter Avalon, adopted in Kazakhstan, stubbornly believes she is a mutant.As if this were not enough she soon finds herself thrown into the middle of a quickly thickening plot, where the legacy of Genghis Khan meets the hunt for FOXP5, a genetic transcription factor that could herald the dawn of new human species.Initially caught helplessly between well-meaning fellow scientists, the government, and more sinister agents, Michelle, with the help of a host of unlikely heroes, eventually takes control and finds the courage to confront the decision of whether to save human lives or humanity.The scientific and technical aspects underlying the plot—in particular aspects of FOX proteins, genetic mutations, viruses, and cancer, as well as the relation between intelligence and cortical complexity—are introduced and discussed by the authors in an extensive nontechnical appendix.

About Wallace Kaufman

Wallace Kaufman is a science writer whose fiction, nonfiction, journalism, and poetry have appeared in major magazines and newspapers in the U.S., England, and Kazakhstan. He is a graduate of Duke University and he earned an M.Litt. from Oxford University. His research and reporting has taken him to Central and South America and to the Arctic and Pacific coasts of Siberia. In Latin America he helped indigenous writers establish themselves and translated the first two books by Mayan writer Victor Montejo. In Kazakhstan he worked with Kazakhs on translations of their principal writers. His own translations of German, French, and Spanish poetry and fiction have appeared in several magazines. His books include Invasive Plants, Coming Out of the Woods, No Turning Back, and The Beaches Are Moving.

About David Deamer

David Deamer is Research Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His current research focuses on how DNA and RNA emerged on the early Earth before life began. Deamer was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986 and served as the President of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life from 2011-2014.

About Nancy Wu

Nancy Wu is an award-winning narrator who has worked in animation, television, theater, and film. Having lived and recorded all over the world, she is known for her vivid action/fantasy characters, accents, and bringing literature and nonfiction equally to life. A graduate of Amherst College with her master's degree in human rights, she is an avid Ashtanga yoga practitioner and rock climber. Born and raised in West Virginia, she currently resides in Boulder, Colorado.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Brian

I've read a good few novels that attempt to provide edutainment - to work as a good story while simultaneously providing the reader with the kind of interesting information about science you might find in a popular science book. Most don't work at all. Either they fall over on the fiction writing, p......more

Goodreads review by Daniel

Writing balanced science fiction can be a real challenge, particularly if an author is trying to keep the science 100% accurate and the speculation 100% plausible. At least, it's hard for me to find 'hard SF' that I enjoy. Some may be fine with a work from the sub-genre even if it has little literar......more

An educational thriller. Interesting on the scientific side. Characters, plot and setting were ok, sometimes really good. I would have liked the »science behind…« part to be longer, actually.......more

Goodreads review by Dave

Unsure if my version was truncated or the last chapter had a very sudden transition; enjoyed it though.......more


Quotes

“This title by Wallace Kaufman and David Deamer, I would say, is the best I’ve ever read…[I] enjoyed the adventure, which hovered between adult and young adult in apparent audience level, and felt I was really gaining something from the science content.” Popular Science author Brian Clegg